It was a very cold winter in northwest China when a little beggar girl who could neither hear nor speak followed a rag-tag line of children into a large white tent. She fixed her eyes on the woman who was speaking and the bright colored pictures she showed. Gwa-gwa, whose name means Little Lonely, could not know that one of those pictures was to change her life.

Gwa-gwa is a real person; the missionaries are real, as are many of the details of the story. When at last she comes to a real home on Christmas Day, a day she afterward called her coming day, Gwa-gwa found some answers to the questions she couldn't even ask. What did the picture mean? Who was the Baby? And what did it have to do with her?